Eating out is an indulgence – so is putting calorie counts on menus doomed to fail?

Yes, we need to do something about obesity. But this new legislation seems unlikely to help

Everything I am, I owe to calories, as Sophia Loren never quite said. I have built myself, one edible unit of energy at a time. In truth I have more than built myself. I am over-engineered, in the way Mussolini's Milan railway station is over-engineered, or Jason Momoa is over-engineered. See how deftly I compare myself to Momoa? We are exactly the same, him and me. Save that every calorie he consumes turns into a plank of rippling muscle, while mine turn into the greatest muffin top this side of the Greggs cake counter. But it's all flesh, right?

Ah, calories. Mostly I try to ignore them; to regard them as I do the isobars on a meteorologist's map which in no way describe the experience of standing outside in a howling gale. I know that not all calories are equal; that calories from carbs impact the body differently to those obtained from protein, for example. I also know that we all process foods differently. I have a metabolism that suggests I may at some point have been gene-spliced with a sloth, and hence spend hours in the gym brutalising myself. I also like my dinner very much. I regard the diet book industry as a massive scam. If a single diet book worked there would be no need to publish another one ever again. But still they come.